Identity

by Milan Kundera

Same guy who wrote "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". A friend of mine went on a Kundera kick, and recommended a few of his books to me, and when I saw this one at the used bookstore, I hoped it was one of those.

It's an interesting book about people in love, about people growing older, and about how people view themselves in the light that others view them. Don't know that I liked the end of the book - seemed more symbolic than a real course of action that these people would take.

A couple good quotes from it:
"It is always that way: between the moment he meets her again and the moment he recognizes her for the woman he loves, he has some distance to go... If, before that one-on-one encounter, he had spent much time with her as she was among other people, would he have recognized her as the beloved being? If he had known her only with hte face she shows her colleagues, her bosses, her subordinates, would that face have moved and enchanted him? To these questions he has no answer."

"To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see tha t it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted plants, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of our past, that is to say, our friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so that we can look at ourselves in it."

"Everything changed when I met you. Not because my little jobs became more exciting. But because everything that happens around me I turn into fodder for our conversations." "We could talk about other things!" "Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together." "They could be silent." "Like those two, at the next table?" Jean Marc laughed. "Oh, no, no love can survive muteness."

"Why are we living? To provide God with human flesh. Because the Bible, my dear lady, does not ask us to seek the meaning of life. It asks us to procreate. Love one another and procreate. Understand this: the meaning of that 'love one another' is determined by that 'procreate.' That 'love one another' carries absolutely no implication of charitable love, of compassionate, spiritual, or passionat love, it only means verys simply 'make love!' 'copulate' (he drops his void and leans to her) 'f[#%&]!'" (Like a devout disciple, docilely, the woman gazes nto his eyes.) "That, and that alone, constitutes the meaning of human life. All the rest is bulls[#%&]."